Mexican Carlos Slim (left) is the richest man in the world, while Brazilian Jorge Lemann is now Brazil's wealthiest individual, according to estimates from Forbes. (Photos: Agencia Brasil and Colombia University)

Monday, March 4, 2013

Special Reports

Latin America: Record Billionaires, Fortune

Peru now has twice as many billionaires as Colombia.

BY JOACHIM BAMRUD

Although Latin America’s economy had a slowdown last year compared with 2011, the estimated fortune of the region’s billionaires jumped, as did the number of billionaires.

Latin America now has 98 billionaires, 34 more than in 2012. Meanwhile, their combined fortune reached a whopping $477.9 billion, or 29.9 percent more than the fortune of the 64 billionaires in 2012, according to a Latinvex analysis of the latest annual ranking of the world’s billionaires from Forbes magazine.

To put that into context: The combined fortune of Latin America’s billionaires is the equivalent of 41 percent of the region’s second-largest economy, Mexico.

Half of the new billionaires came from Chile and Peru. In Chile, the ...